<tcl>hd_keywords *fts3 FTS3 {full-text search}</tcl>
<title>SQLite FTS3 and FTS4 Extensions</title>
<table_of_contents>
<h2 style="margin-left:1.0em" notoc> Overview</h2>
<p>
FTS3 and FTS4 are an SQLite virtual table modules that allows users to perform
full-text searches on a set of documents. The most common (and effective)
way to describe full-text searches is "what Google, Yahoo and Altavista do
with documents placed on the World Wide Web". Users input a term, or series
of terms, perhaps connected by a binary operator or grouped together into a
phrase, and the full-text query system finds the set of documents that best
matches those terms considering the operators and groupings the user has
specified. This article describes the deployment and usage of FTS3 and FTS4.
<p>
FTS1 and FTS2 are obsolete full-text search modules for SQLite. There are known
issues with this older modules and their use should be avoided.
Portions of the original FTS3 code were contributed to the SQLite project
by Scott Hess of <a href="http://www.google.com">Google</a>. It is now
developed and maintained as part of SQLite.
<h1>Introduction to FTS3 and FTS4</h1>
<p>
The FTS3 and FTS4 extension modules allows users to create special tables with a
built-in full-text index (hereafter "FTS tables"). The full-text index
allows the user to efficiently query the database for all rows that contain
one or more words (hereafter "tokens"), even if the table
contains many large documents.
<p>
For example, if each of the 517430 documents in the
"<a href="http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~enron/">Enron E-Mail Dataset</a>"
is inserted into both an FTS table and an ordinary SQLite table
created using the following SQL script:
<codeblock>
CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE enrondata1 USING fts3(content TEXT); /* FTS3 table */
CREATE TABLE enrondata2(content TEXT); /* Ordinary table */
</codeblock>
<p>
Then either of the two queries below may be executed to find the number of
documents in the database that contain the word "linux" (351). Using one
desktop PC hardware configuration, the query on the FTS3 table returns in
approximately 0.03 seconds, versus 22.5 for querying the ordinary table.
<codeblock>
SELECT count(*) FROM enrondata1 WHERE content MATCH 'linux'; /* 0.03 seconds */
SELECT count(*) FROM enrondata2 WHERE content LIKE '%linux%'; /* 22.5 seconds */
</codeblock>
<p>
Of course, the two queries above are not entirely equivalent. For example
the LIKE query matches rows that contain terms such as "linuxophobe"
or "EnterpriseLinux" (as it happens, the Enron E-Mail Dataset does not
actually contain any such terms), whereas the MATCH query on the FTS3 table
selects only those rows that contain "linux" as a discrete token. Both
searches are case-insensitive. The FTS3 table consumes around 2006 MB on
disk compared to just 1453 MB for the ordinary table. Using the same
hardware configuration used to perform the SELECT queries above, the FTS3
table took just under 31 minutes to populate, versus 25 for the ordinary
table.
<h2>Differences between FTS3 and FTS4</h2>
<tcl>hd_fragment fts4 FTS4</tcl>
<p>
FTS3 and FTS4 are nearly identical. They share most of their code in common,
and their interfaces are the same. The differences are:
<ul>
<li> <p>FTS4 contains query performance optimizations that may significantly
improve the performance of full-text queries that contain terms that are
very common (present in a large percentage of table rows).
<li> <p>FTS4 supports some additional options that may used with the [matchinfo()]
function.
<li> <p>Because it stores extra information on disk in two new
[FTS shadow tables|shadow tables] in order to support the performance
optimizations and extra matchinfo() options, FTS4 tables may consume more
disk space than the equivalent table created using FTS3. Usually the overhead
is 1-2% or less, but may be as high as 10% if the documents stored in the
FTS table are very small. The overhead may be reduced by specifying the
directive [matchinfo_fts3|"matchinfo=fts3"] as part of the FTS4 table
declaration, but this comes at the expense of sacrificing some of the
extra supported matchinfo() options.
<li> <p>FTS4 provides hooks (the compress and uncompress
[FTS4 options|options]) allowing data to be stored in a compressed
form, reducing disk usage and IO.
</ul>
<p>
FTS4 is an enhancement to FTS3. FTS3 has been available since SQLite [version 3.5.0] in
2007-09-04. The enhancements for FTS4 were added with SQLite [version 3.7.4] on 2010-12-08.
<p>
Which module, FTS3 or FTS4, should you use in your application? FTS4 is
sometimes significantly faster than FTS3, even orders of magnitude faster
depending on the query, though in the common case the performance of the two
modules is similar. FTS4 also offers the enhanced [matchinfo()] outputs which
can be useful in ranking the results of a [FTS MATCH|MATCH] operation. On the
other hand, in the absence of a [matchinfo_fts3|matchinfo=fts3] directive FTS4 requires a little
more disk space than FTS3, though only a percent of two in most cases.
<p>
For newer applications, FTS4 is recommended; though if compatibility with older
versions of SQLite is important, then FTS3 will usually serve just as well.
<h2>Creating and Destroying FTS Tables</h2>
<p>
Like other virtual table types, new FTS tables are created using a
[CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE] statement. The module name, which follows
the USING keyword, is either "fts3" or "fts4". The virtual table module arguments may
be left empty, in which case an FTS table with a single user-defined
column named "content" is created. Alternatively, the module arguments
may be passed a list of comma separated column names.
<p>
If column names are explicitly provided for the FTS table as part of
the CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE statement, then a datatype name may be optionally
specified for each column. This is pure syntactic sugar, the
supplied typenames are not used by FTS or the SQLite core for any
purpose. The same applies to any constraints specified along with an
FTS column name - they are parsed but not used or recorded by the system
in any way.
<codeblock>
<i>-- Create an FTS table named "data" with one column - "content":</i>
CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE data USING fts3();
<i>-- Create an FTS table named "pages" with three columns:</i>
CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE pages USING fts4(title, keywords, body);
<i>-- Create an FTS table named "mail" with two columns. Datatypes
-- and column constraints are specified along with each column. These
-- are completely ignored by FTS and SQLite. </i>
CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE mail USING fts3(
subject VARCHAR(256) NOT NULL,
body TEXT CHECK(length(body)&lt;10240)
);
</codeblock>
<p>
As well as a list of columns, the module arguments passed to a CREATE
VIRTUAL TABLE statement used to create an FTS table may be used to specify
a [tokenizer]. This is done by specifying a string of the form
"tokenize=&lt;tokenizer name&gt; &lt;tokenizer args&gt;" in place of a column
name, where &lt;tokenizer name&gt; is the name of the tokenizer to use and
&lt;tokenizer args&gt; is an optional list of whitespace separated qualifiers
to pass to the tokenizer implementation. A tokenizer specification may be
placed anywhere in the column list, but at most one tokenizer declaration is
allowed for each CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE statement. [tokenizer|See below] for a
detailed description of using (and, if necessary, implementing) a tokenizer.
<codeblock>
<i>-- Create an FTS table named "papers" with two columns that uses</i>
<i>-- the tokenizer "porter".</i>
CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE papers USING fts3(author, document, tokenize=porter);
<i>-- Create an FTS table with a single column - "content" - that uses</i>
<i>-- the "simple" tokenizer.</i>
CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE data USING fts4(tokenize=simple);
<i>-- Create an FTS table with two columns that uses the "icu" tokenizer.</i>
<i>-- The qualifier "en_AU" is passed to the tokenizer implementation</i>
CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE names USING fts3(a, b, tokenize=icu en_AU);
</codeblock>
<p>
FTS tables may be dropped from the database using an ordinary [DROP TABLE]
statement. For example:
<codeblock>
<i>-- Create, then immediately drop, an FTS4 table.</i>
CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE data USING fts4();
DROP TABLE data;
</codeblock>
<h3 id=fts4_options tags="FTS4 options">FTS4 Options</h3>
<p>
<tcl>hd_fragment *matchinfo_fts3 {matchinfo_fts3}</tcl>
If the "CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE" statement specifies module FTS4 (not FTS3),
then special directives - FTS4 options - similar to the "tokenize=*" option
may also appear in place of column names. An FTS4 option consists of the
option name, followed by an "=" character, followed by the option value.
The option value may optionally be enclosed in single or double quotes, with
embedded quote characters escaped in the same way as for SQL literals. There
may not be whitespace on either side of the "=" character. For example,
to create an FTS4 table with the value of option "matchinfo" set to "fts3":
<codeblock>
<i>-- Create a reduced-footprint FTS4 table.</i>
CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE papers USING fts4(author, document, matchinfo=fts3);
</codeblock>
<p>
FTS4 currently supports the following three options:
<table striped=1>
<tr><th>Option<th>Interpretation
<tr><td>matchinfo<td> This option may only be set to the value "fts3".
Attempting to set it otherwise is an error. If this option is specified,
then some of the extra information stored by FTS4 is omitted. This reduces
the amount of disk space consumed by an FTS4 table until it is almost the
same as the amount that would be used by the equivalent FTS3 table, but
also means that the data accessed by passing the 'l' flag to the
[matchinfo()] function is not available. For example:
<tr><td>compress<td>
This option is used to specify the compress function. It is an error to
specify a compress function without also specifying an uncompress
function.
<tr><td>uncompress<td>
This option is used to specify the uncompress function. It is an error to
specify an uncompress function without also specifying a compress
function.
</table>
<p>
The compress and uncompress options allow FTS4 content to be stored in
the database in a compressed form. Both options should be set to the name
of an SQL scalar function registered using [sqlite3_create_function()]
that accepts a single argument.
<p>
The compress function should return a compressed version of the value
passed to it as an argument. Each time data is written to the FTS4 table,
each column value is passed to the compress function and the result value
stored in the database. The compress function may return any type of SQLite
value (blob, text, real, integer or null).
<p>
The uncompress function should uncompress data previously compressed by
the compress function. In other words, for all SQLite values X, it should
be true that uncompress(compress(X)) equals X. When data that has been
compressed by the compress function is read from the database by FTS4, it
is passed to the uncompress function before it is used.
<p>
If the specified compress or uncompress functions do not exist, the table
may still be created. An error is not returned until the FTS4 table is
read (if the uncompress function does not exist) or written (if it is the
compress function that does not exist).
<codeblock>
<i>-- Create an FTS4 table that stores data in compressed form. This</i>
<i>-- assumes that the scalar functions zip() and unzip() have been (or</i>
<i>-- will be) added to the database handle.</i>
CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE papers USING fts4(author, document, compress=zip, uncompress=unzip);
</codeblock>
<p>
When using FTS4, specifying a column name that contains an "=" character
and is not either a "tokenize=*" specification or a recognized FTS4 option
is an error. With FTS3, the first token in the unrecognized directive is
interpreted as a column name. Similarly, specifying multiple "tokenize=*"
directives in a single table declaration is an error when using FTS4, whereas
the second and subsequent "tokenize=*" directives are interpreted as column
names by FTS3. For example:
<codeblock>
<i>-- An error. FTS4 does not recognize the directive "xyz=abc".</i>
CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE papers USING fts4(author, document, xyz=abc);
<i>-- Create an FTS3 table with three columns - "author", "document"</i>
<i>-- and "xyz".</i>
CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE papers USING fts3(author, document, xyz=abc);
<i>-- An error. FTS4 does not allow multiple tokenize=* directives</i>
CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE papers USING fts4(tokenize=porter, tokenize=simple);
<i>-- Create an FTS3 table with a single column named "tokenize". The</i>
<i>-- table uses the "porter" tokenizer.</i>
CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE papers USING fts3(tokenize=porter, tokenize=simple);
<i>-- An error. Cannot create a table with two columns named "tokenize".</i>
CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE papers USING fts3(tokenize=porter, tokenize=simple, tokenize=icu);
</codeblock>
<h2>Populating FTS Tables</h2>
<p>
FTS tables are populated using [INSERT], [UPDATE] and [DELETE]
statements in the same way as ordinary SQLite tables are.
<p>
As well as the columns named by the user (or the "content" column if no
module arguments were specified as part of the [CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE]
statement), each FTS table has a "rowid" column. The rowid of an FTS
table behaves in the same way as the rowid column of an ordinary SQLite
table, except that the values stored in the rowid column of an FTS table
remain unchanged if the database is rebuilt using the [VACUUM] command.
For FTS tables, "docid" is allowed as an alias along with the usual "rowid",
"oid" and "_oid_" identifiers. Attempting to insert or update a row with a
docid value that already exists in the table is an error, just as it would
be with an ordinary SQLite table.
<p>
There is one other subtle difference between "docid" and the normal SQLite
aliases for the rowid column. Normally, if an INSERT or UPDATE statement
assigns discrete values to two or more aliases of the rowid column, SQLite
writes the rightmost of such values specified in the INSERT or UPDATE
statement to the database. However, assigning a non-NULL value to both
the "docid" and one or more of the SQLite rowid aliases when inserting or
updating an FTS table is considered an error. See below for an example.
<codeblock>
<i>-- Create an FTS table</i>
CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE pages USING fts4(title, body);
<i>-- Insert a row with a specific docid value.</i>
INSERT INTO pages(docid, title, body) VALUES(53, 'Home Page', 'SQLite is a software...');
<i>-- Insert a row and allow FTS to assign a docid value using the same algorithm as</i>
<i>-- SQLite uses for ordinary tables. In this case the new docid will be 54,</i>
<i>-- one greater than the largest docid currently present in the table.</i>
INSERT INTO pages(title, body) VALUES('Download', 'All SQLite source code...');
<i>-- Change the title of the row just inserted.</i>
UPDATE pages SET title = 'Download SQLite' WHERE rowid = 54;
<i>-- Delete the entire table contents.</i>
DELETE FROM pages;
<i>-- The following is an error. It is not possible to assign non-NULL values to both</i>
<i>-- the rowid and docid columns of an FTS table.</i>
INSERT INTO pages(rowid, docid, title, body) VALUES(1, 2, 'A title', 'A document body');
</codeblock>
<p>
To support full-text queries, FTS maintains an inverted index that maps
from each unique term or word that appears in the dataset to the locations
in which it appears within the table contents. For the curious, a
complete description of the [segment btree|data structure] used to store
this index within the database file appears below. A feature of
this data structure is that at any time the database may contain not
one index b-tree, but several different b-trees that are incrementally
merged as rows are inserted, updated and deleted. This technique improves
performance when writing to an FTS table, but causes some overhead for
full-text queries that use the index. Executing an SQL statement of the
form "INSERT INTO &lt;fts-table&gt;(&lt;fts-table&gt;) VALUES('optimize')"
causes FTS to merge all existing index b-trees into a single large
b-tree containing the entire index. This can be an expensive operation,
but may speed up future queries.
<p>
For example, to optimize the full-text index for an FTS table named
"docs":
<codeblock>
<i>-- Optimize the internal structure of FTS table "docs".</i>
INSERT INTO docs(docs) VALUES('optimize');
</codeblock>
<p>
The statement above may appear syntactically incorrect to some. Refer to
the section describing the [simple fts queries] for an explanation.
<p>
There is another, deprecated, method for invoking the optimize
operation using a SELECT statement. New code should use statements
similar to the INSERT above to optimize FTS structures.
<h2 tags="simple fts queries">Simple FTS Queries</h2>
<p>
As for all other SQLite tables, virtual or otherwise, data is retrieved
from FTS tables using a [SELECT] statement.
<p>
FTS tables can be queried efficiently using SELECT statements of two
different forms:
<ul>
<li><p>
<b>Query by rowid</b>. If the WHERE clause of the SELECT statement
contains a sub-clause of the form "rowid = ?", where ? is an SQL expression,
FTS is able to retrieve the requested row directly using the equivalent
of an SQLite [INTEGER PRIMARY KEY] index.
<li><p>
<b>Full-text query</b>. If the WHERE clause of the SELECT statement contains
a sub-clause of the form "&lt;column&gt; MATCH ?", FTS is able to use
the built-in full-text index to restrict the search to those documents
that match the full-text query string specified as the right-hand operand
of the MATCH clause.
</ul>
<p>
If neither of these two query strategies can be used, all
queries on FTS tables are implemented using a linear scan of the entire
table. If the table contains large amounts of data, this may be an
impractical approach (the first example on this page shows that a linear
scan of 1.5 GB of data takes around 30 seconds using a modern PC).
<codeblock>
<i>-- The examples in this block assume the following FTS table:</i>
CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE mail USING fts3(subject, body);
SELECT * FROM mail WHERE rowid = 15; <i>-- Fast. Rowid lookup.</i>
SELECT * FROM mail WHERE body MATCH 'sqlite'; <i>-- Fast. Full-text query.</i>
SELECT * FROM mail WHERE mail MATCH 'search'; <i>-- Fast. Full-text query.</i>
SELECT * FROM mail WHERE rowid BETWEEN 15 AND 20; <i>-- Slow. Linear scan.</i>
SELECT * FROM mail WHERE subject = 'database'; <i>-- Slow. Linear scan.</i>
SELECT * FROM mail WHERE subject MATCH 'database'; <i>-- Fast. Full-text query.</i>
</codeblock>
<p>
In all of the full-text queries above, the right-hand operand of the MATCH
operator is a string consisting of a single term. In this case, the MATCH
expression evaluates to true for all documents that contain one or more
instances of the specified word ("sqlite", "search" or "database", depending
on which example you look at). Specifying a single term as the right-hand
operand of the MATCH operator results in the simplest and most common type
of full-text query possible. However more complicated queries are possible,
including phrase searches, term-prefix searches and searches for documents
containing combinations of terms occuring within a defined proximity of each
other. The various ways in which the full-text index may be queried are
[FTS MATCH|described below].
<p>
Normally, full-text queries are case-insensitive. However, this is
is dependent on the specific [tokenizer] used by the FTS table
being queried. Refer to the section on [tokenizer|tokenizers] for details.
<p>
The paragraph above notes that a MATCH operator with a simple term as the
right-hand operand evaluates to true for all documents that contain the
specified term. In this context, the "document" may refer to either the
data stored in a single column of a row of an FTS table, or to the contents
of all columns in a single row, depending on the identifier used as the
left-hand operand to the MATCH operator. If the identifier specified as
the left-hand operand of the MATCH operator is an FTS table column name,
then the document that the search term must be contained in is the value
stored in the specified column. However, if the identifier is the name
of the FTS <i>table</i> itself, then the MATCH operator evaluates to true
for each row of the FTS table for which any column contains the search
term. The following example demonstrates this:
<codeblock>
<i>-- Example schema</i>
CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE mail USING fts3(subject, body);
<i>-- Example table population</i>
INSERT INTO mail(docid, subject, body) VALUES(1, 'software feedback', 'found it too slow');
INSERT INTO mail(docid, subject, body) VALUES(2, 'software feedback', 'no feedback');
INSERT INTO mail(docid, subject, body) VALUES(3, 'slow lunch order', 'was a software problem');
<i>-- Example queries</i>
SELECT * FROM mail WHERE subject MATCH 'software'; <i>-- Selects rows 1 and 2</i>
SELECT * FROM mail WHERE body MATCH 'feedback'; <i>-- Selects row 2</i>
SELECT * FROM mail WHERE mail MATCH 'software'; <i>-- Selects rows 1, 2 and 3</i>
SELECT * FROM mail WHERE mail MATCH 'slow'; <i>-- Selects rows 1 and 3</i>
</codeblock>
<p>
At first glance, the final two full-text queries in the example above seem
to be syntactically incorrect, as there is a table name ("mail") used as
an SQL expression. The reason this is acceptable is that each FTS table
actually has a [sqlite3_declare_vtab|HIDDEN] column with the same name
as the table itself (in this case, "mail"). The value stored in this
column is not meaningful to the application, but can be used as the
left-hand operand to a MATCH operator. This special column may also be
passed as an argument to the [snippet()|FTS auxiliary functions].
<p>
The following example illustrates the above. The expressions "docs",
"docs.docs" and "main.docs.docs" all refer to column "docs". However, the
expression "main.docs" does not refer to any column. It could be used to
refer to a table, but a table name is not allowed in the context in which
it is used below.
<codeblock>
<i>-- Example schema</i>
CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE docs USING fts4(content);
<i>-- Example queries</i>
SELECT * FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH 'sqlite'; <i>-- OK.</i>
SELECT * FROM docs WHERE docs.docs MATCH 'sqlite'; <i>-- OK.</i>
SELECT * FROM docs WHERE main.docs.docs MATCH 'sqlite'; <i>-- OK.</i>
SELECT * FROM docs WHERE main.docs MATCH 'sqlite'; <i>-- Error.</i>
</codeblock>
<h2>Summary</h2>
<p>
From the users point of view, FTS tables are similar to ordinary SQLite
tables in many ways. Data may be added to, modified within and removed
from FTS tables using the INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE commands just as
it may be with ordinary tables. Similarly, the SELECT command may be used
to query data. The following list summarizes the differences between FTS
and ordinary tables:
<ol>
<li><p>
As with all virtual table types, it is not possible to create indices or
triggers attached to FTS tables. Nor is it possible to use the ALTER TABLE
command to add extra columns to FTS tables (although it is possible to use
ALTER TABLE to rename an FTS table).
<li><p>
Data-types specified as part of the "CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE" statement
used to create an FTS table are ignored completely. Instead of the
normal rules for applying type [affinity] to inserted values, all
values inserted into FTS table columns (except the special rowid
column) are converted to type TEXT before being stored.
<li><p>
FTS tables permit the special alias "docid" to be used to refer to the
rowid column supported by all [virtual tables].
<li><p>
The [FTS MATCH] operator is supported for queries based on the built-in
full-text index.
<li><p>
The [FTS auxiliary functions], [snippet()], [offsets()], and [matchinfo()] are
available to support full-text queries.
<li><p>
<tcl>hd_fragment hiddencol {FTS hidden column}</tcl>
Every FTS table has a [hidden column] with the
same name as the table itself. The value contained in each row for the
hidden column is a blob that is only useful as the left operand of a
[FTS MATCH|MATCH] operator, or as the left-most argument to one
of the [FTS auxiliary functions].
</ol>
<h1 tags="compile fts">Compiling and Enabling FTS3 and FTS4</h1>
<p>
Although FTS3 and FTS4 are included with the SQLite core source code, they are not
enabled by default. To build SQLite with FTS functionality enabled, define
the preprocessor macro [SQLITE_ENABLE_FTS3] when compiling. New applications
should also define the [SQLITE_ENABLE_FTS3_PARENTHESIS] macro to enable the
[enhanced query syntax] (see below). Usually, this is done by adding the
following two switches to the compiler command line:
<codeblock>
-DSQLITE_ENABLE_FTS3
-DSQLITE_ENABLE_FTS3_PARENTHESIS
</codeblock>
<p>
Note that enabling FTS3 also makes FTS4 available. There is not a separate
SQLITE_ENABLE_FTS4 compile-time option. An build of SQLite either supports
both FTS3 and FTS4 or it supports neither.
<p>
If using the amalgamation autoconf based build system, setting the CPPFLAGS
environment variable while running the 'configure' script is an easy
way to set these macros. For example, the following command:
<codeblock>
CPPFLAGS="-DSQLITE_ENABLE_FTS3 -DSQLITE_ENABLE_FTS3_PARENTHESIS" ./configure &lt;configure options&gt;
</codeblock>
<p>
where <i>&lt;configure options&gt;</i> are those options normally passed to
the configure script, if any.
<p>
Because FTS3 and FTS4 are virtual tables, The [SQLITE_ENABLE_FTS3] compile-time option
is incompatible with the [SQLITE_OMIT_VIRTUALTABLE] option.
<p>
If a build of SQLite does not include the FTS modules, then any attempt to prepare an
SQL statement to create an FTS3 or FTS4 table or to drop or access an existing
FTS table in any way will fail. The error message returned will be similar
to "no such module: ftsN" (where N is either 3 or 4).
<p>
If the C version of the <a href=http://site.icu-project.org/>ICU library</a>
is available, then FTS may also be compiled with the SQLITE_ENABLE_ICU
pre-processor macro defined. Compiling with this macro enables an FTS
[tokenizer] that uses the ICU library to split a document into terms
(words) using the conventions for a specified language and locale.
<codeblock>
-DSQLITE_ENABLE_ICU
</codeblock>
<h1 tags="FTS MATCH">Full-text Index Queries</h1>
<p>
The most useful thing about FTS tables is the queries that may be
performed using the built-in full-text index. Full-text queries are
performed by specifying a clause of the form
"&lt;column&gt; MATCH &lt;full-text query expression&gt;" as part of the WHERE
clause of a SELECT statement that reads data from an FTS table.
[simple fts queries|Simple FTS queries] that return all documents that
contain a given term are described above. In that discussion the right-hand
operand of the MATCH operator was assumed to be a string consisting of a
single term. This section describes the more complex query types supported
by FTS tables, and how they may be utilized by specifying a more
complex query expression as the right-hand operand of a MATCH operator.
<p>
FTS tables support three basic query types:
<ul>
<li><p><b>Token or token prefix queries</b>.
An FTS table may be queried for all documents that contain a specified
term (the [simple fts queries|simple case] described above), or for
all documents that contain a term with a specified prefix. As we have
seen, the query expression for a specific term is simply the term itself.
The query expression used to search for a term prefix is the prefix
itself with a '*' character appended to it. For example:
</ul>
<codeblock>
<i>-- Virtual table declaration</i>
CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE docs USING fts3(title, body);
<i>-- Query for all documents containing the term "linux":</i>
SELECT * FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH 'linux';
<i>-- Query for all documents containing a term with the prefix "lin". This will match</i>
<i>-- all documents that contain "linux", but also those that contain terms "linear",</i>
<i>--"linker", "linguistic" and so on.</i>
SELECT * FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH 'lin*';
</codeblock>
<ul>
<li style="list-style:none"><p>
Normally, a token or token prefix query is matched against the FTS table
column specified as the right-hand side of the MATCH operator. Or, if the
special column with the same name as the FTS table itself is specified,
against all columns. This may be overridden by specifying a column-name
followed by a ":" character before a basic term query. There may be space
between the ":" and the term to query for, but not between the column-name
and the ":" character. For example:
</ul>
<codeblock>
<i>-- Query the database for documents for which the term "linux" appears in</i>
<i>-- the document title, and the term "problems" appears in either the title</i>
<i>-- or body of the document.</i>
SELECT * FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH 'title:linux problems';
<i>-- Query the database for documents for which the term "linux" appears in</i>
<i>-- the document title, and the term "driver" appears in the body of the document</i>
<i>-- ("driver" may also appear in the title, but this alone will not satisfy the</i>.
<i>-- query criteria).</i>
SELECT * FROM docs WHERE body MATCH 'title:linux driver';
</codeblock>
<ul>
<li><p><b>Phrase queries</b>.
A phrase query is a query that retrieves all documents that contain a
nominated set of terms or term prefixes in a specified order with no
intervening tokens. Phrase queries are specified by enclosing a space
separated sequence of terms or term prefixes in double quotes (").
For example:
</ul>
<codeblock>
<i>-- Query for all documents that contain the phrase "linux applications".</i>
SELECT * FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH '"linux applications"';
<i>-- Query for all documents that contain a phrase that matches "lin* app*". As well as</i>
<i>-- "linux applications", this will match common phrases such as "linoleum appliances"</i>
<i>-- or "link apprentice".</i>
SELECT * FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH '"lin* app*"';
</codeblock>
<ul>
<li><p><b>NEAR queries</b>.
A NEAR query is a query that returns documents that contain a two or
more nominated terms or phrases within a specified proximity of each
other (by default with 10 or less intervening terms). A NEAR query is
specified by putting the keyword "NEAR" between two phrase, term or
term prefix queries. To specify a proximity other than the default,
an operator of the form "NEAR/<i>&lt;N&gt;</i>" may be used, where
<i>&lt;N&gt;</i> is the maximum number of intervening terms allowed.
For example:
</ul>
<codeblock>
<i>-- Virtual table declaration.</i>
CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE docs USING fts4();
<i>-- Virtual table data.</i>
INSERT INTO docs VALUES('SQLite is an ACID compliant embedded relational database management system');
<i>-- Search for a document that contains the terms "sqlite" and "database" with</i>
<i>-- not more than 10 intervening terms. This matches the only document in</i>
<i>-- table docs (since there are only six terms between "SQLite" and "database"</i>
<i>-- in the document)</i>.
SELECT * FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH 'sqlite NEAR database';
<i>-- Search for a document that contains the terms "sqlite" and "database" with</i>
<i>-- not more than 6 intervening terms. This also matches the only document in</i>
<i>-- table docs. Note that the order in which the terms appear in the document</i>
<i>-- does not have to be the same as the order in which they appear in the query.</i>
SELECT * FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH 'database NEAR/6 sqlite';
<i>-- Search for a document that contains the terms "sqlite" and "database" with</i>
<i>-- not more than 5 intervening terms. This query matches no documents.</i>
SELECT * FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH 'database NEAR/5 sqlite';
<i>-- Search for a document that contains the phrase "ACID compliant" and the term</i>
<i>-- "database" with not more than 2 terms separating the two. This matches the</i>
<i>-- document stored in table docs.</i>
SELECT * FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH 'database NEAR/2 "ACID compliant"';
<i>-- Search for a document that contains the phrase "ACID compliant" and the term</i>
<i>-- "sqlite" with not more than 2 terms separating the two. This also matches</i>
<i>-- the only document stored in table docs.</i>
SELECT * FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH '"ACID compliant" NEAR/2 sqlite';
</codeblock>
<ul>
<li style="list-style: none"><p>
More than one NEAR operator may appear in a single query. In this case each
pair of terms or phrases separated by a NEAR operator must appear within the
specified proximity of each other in the document. Using the same table and
data as in the block of examples above:
</ul>
<codeblock>
<i>-- The following query selects documents that contains an instance of the term </i>
<i>-- "sqlite" separated by two or fewer terms from an instance of the term "acid",</i>
<i>-- which is in turn separated by two or fewer terms from an instance of the term</i>
<i>-- "relational". As it happens, the only document in table docs satisfies this criteria.</i>
SELECT * FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH 'sqlite NEAR/2 acid NEAR/2 relational';
<i>-- This query matches no documents. There is an instance of the term "sqlite" with</i>
<i>-- sufficient proximity to an instance of "acid" but it is not sufficiently close</i>
<i>-- to an instance of the term "relational".</i>
SELECT * FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH 'acid NEAR/2 sqlite NEAR/2 relational';
</codeblock>
<p>
Phrase and NEAR queries may not span multiple columns within a row.
<p>
The three basic query types described above may be used to query the full-text
index for the set of documents that match the specified criteria. Using the
FTS query expression language it is possible to perform various set
operations on the results of basic queries. There are currently three
supported operations:
<ul>
<li> The AND operator determines the <b>intersection</b> of two sets of documents.
<li> The OR operator calculates the <b>union</b> of two sets of documents.
<li> The NOT operator (or, if using the standard syntax, a unary "-" operator)
may be used to compute the <b>relative complement</b> of one set of
documents with respect to another.
</ul>
<p>
The FTS modules may be compiled to use one of two slightly different versions
of the full-text query syntax, the "standard" query syntax and the "enhanced"
query syntax. The basic term, term-prefix, phrase and NEAR queries described
above are the same in both versions of the syntax. The way in which set
operations are specified is slightly different. The following two sub-sections
describe the part of the two query syntaxes that pertains to set operations.
Refer to the description of how to [compile fts] for compilation notes.
<h2 tags="enhanced query syntax">
Set Operations Using The Enhanced Query Syntax</h2>
<p>
The enhanced query syntax supports the AND, OR and NOT binary set operators.
Each of the two operands to an operator may be a basic FTS query, or the
result of another AND, OR or NOT set operation. Operators must be entered
using capital letters. Otherwise, they are interpreted as basic term queries
instead of set operators.
<p>
The AND operator may be implicitly specified. If two basic queries appear
with no operator separating them in an FTS query string, the results are
the same as if the two basic queries were separated by an AND operator.
For example, the query expression "implicit operator" is a more succinct
version of "implicit AND operator".
<codeblock>
<i>-- Virtual table declaration</i>
CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE docs USING fts3();
<i>-- Virtual table data</i>
INSERT INTO docs(docid, content) VALUES(1, 'a database is a software system');
INSERT INTO docs(docid, content) VALUES(2, 'sqlite is a software system');
INSERT INTO docs(docid, content) VALUES(3, 'sqlite is a database');
<i>-- Return the set of documents that contain the term "sqlite", and the</i>
<i>-- term "database". This query will return the document with docid 3 only.</i>
SELECT * FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH 'sqlite AND database';
<i>-- Again, return the set of documents that contain both "sqlite" and</i>
<i>-- "database". This time, use an implicit AND operator. Again, document</i>
<i>-- 3 is the only document matched by this query. </i>
SELECT * FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH 'database sqlite';
<i>-- Query for the set of documents that contains either "sqlite" or "database".</i>
<i>-- All three documents in the database are matched by this query.</i>
SELECT * FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH 'sqlite OR database';
<i>-- Query for all documents that contain the term "database", but do not contain</i>
<i>-- the term "sqlite". Document 1 is the only document that matches this criteria.</i>
SELECT * FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH 'database NOT sqlite';
<i>-- The following query matches no documents. Because "and" is in lowercase letters,</i>
<i>-- it is interpreted as a basic term query instead of an operator. Operators must</i>
<i>-- be specified using capital letters. In practice, this query will match any documents</i>
<i>-- that contain each of the three terms "database", "and" and "sqlite" at least once.</i>
<i>-- No documents in the example data above match this criteria.</i>
SELECT * FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH 'database and sqlite';
</codeblock>
<p>
The examples above all use basic full-text term queries as both operands of
the set operations demonstrated. Phrase and NEAR queries may also be used,
as may the results of other set operations. When more than one set operation
is present in an FTS query, the precedence of operators is as follows:
<table striped=1>
<tr><th>Operator<th>Enhanced Query Syntax Precedence
<tr><td>NOT <td> Highest precedence (tightest grouping).
<tr><td>AND <td>
<tr><td>OR <td> Lowest precedence (loosest grouping).
</table>
<p>
When using the enhanced query syntax, parenthesis may be used to override
the default precedence of the various operators. For example:
<codeblock>
<i>-- Return the docid values associated with all documents that contain the</i>
<i>-- two terms "sqlite" and "database", and/or contain the term "library".</i>
SELECT docid FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH 'sqlite AND database OR library';
<i>-- This query is equivalent to the above.</i>
SELECT docid FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH 'sqlite AND database'
UNION
SELECT docid FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH 'library';
<i>-- Query for the set of documents that contains the term "linux", and at least</i>
<i>-- one of the phrases "sqlite database" and "sqlite library".</i>
SELECT docid FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH '("sqlite database" OR "sqlite library") AND linux';
<i>-- This query is equivalent to the above.</i>
SELECT docid FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH 'linux'
INTERSECT
SELECT docid FROM (
SELECT docid FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH '"sqlite library"'
UNION
SELECT docid FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH '"sqlite database"'
);
</codeblock>
<h2>Set Operations Using The Standard Query Syntax</h2>
<p>
FTS query set operations using the standard query syntax are similar, but
not identical, to set operations with the enhanced query syntax. There
are four differences, as follows:
<ol>
<li value=1><p> Only the implicit version of the AND operator is supported.
Specifying the string "AND" as part of an standard query syntax query is
interpreted as a term query for the set of documents containing the term
"and".
</ol>
<ol>
<li value=2><p> Parenthesis are not supported.
</ol>
<ol>
<li value=3><p> The NOT operator is not supported. Instead of the NOT
operator, the standard query syntax supports a unary "-" operator that
may be applied to basic term and term-prefix queries (but not to phrase
or NEAR queries). A term or term-prefix that has a unary "-" operator
attached to it may not appear as an operand to an OR operator. An FTS
query may not consist entirely of terms or term-prefix queries with unary
"-" operators attached to them.
</ol>
<codeblock>
<i>-- Search for the set of documents that contain the term "sqlite" but do</i>
<i>-- not contain the term "database".</i>
SELECT * FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH 'sqlite -database';
</codeblock>
<ol>
<li value=4><p> The relative precedence of the set operations is different.
In particular, using the standard query syntax the "OR" operator has a
higher precedence than "AND". The precedence of operators when using the
standard query syntax is:
</ol>
<table striped=1>
<tr><th>Operator<th>Standard Query Syntax Precedence
<tr><td>Unary "-" <td> Highest precedence (tightest grouping).
<tr><td>OR <td>
<tr><td>AND <td> Lowest precedence (loosest grouping).
</table>
<ol><li style="list-style:none">
The following example illustrates precedence of operators using the standard
query syntax:
</ol>
<codeblock>
<i>-- Search for documents that contain at least one of the terms "database"</i>
<i>-- and "sqlite", and also contain the term "library". Because of the differences</i>
<i>-- in operator precedences, this query would have a different interpretation using</i>
<i>-- the enhanced query syntax.</i>
SELECT * FROM docs WHERE docs MATCH 'sqlite OR database library';
</codeblock>
<tcl>hd_fragment snippet {FTS auxiliary functions}</tcl>
<h1>Auxiliary Functions - Snippet, Offsets and Matchinfo</h1>
<p>
The FTS3 and FTS4 modules provide three special SQL scalar functions that may be useful
to the developers of full-text query systems: "snippet", "offsets" and
"matchinfo". The purpose of the "snippet" and "offsets" functions is to allow
the user to identify the location of queried terms in the returned documents.
The "matchinfo" function provides the user with metrics that may be useful
for filtering or sorting query results according to relevance.
<p>
The first argument to all three special SQL scalar functions
must be the [FTS hidden column] of the FTS table that the function is
applied to. The [FTS hidden column] is an automatically-generated column found on
all FTS tables that has the same name as the FTS table itself.
For example, given an FTS table named "mail":
<codeblock>
SELECT offsets(mail) FROM mail WHERE mail MATCH &lt;full-text query expression&gt;;
SELECT snippet(mail) FROM mail WHERE mail MATCH &lt;full-text query expression&gt;;
SELECT matchinfo(mail) FROM mail WHERE mail MATCH &lt;full-text query expression&gt;;
</codeblock>
<p>
The three auxiliary functions are only useful within a SELECT statement that
uses the FTS table's full-text index. ^If used within a SELECT that uses
the "query by rowid" or "linear scan" strategies, then the snippet and
offsets both return an empty string, and the matchinfo function returns
a blob value zero bytes in size.
<p id=matchable>
All three auxiliary functions extract a set of "matchable phrases" from
the FTS query expression to work with. The set of matchable phrases for
a given query consists of all phrases (including unquoted tokens and
token prefixes) in the expression except those that are prefixed with
a unary "-" operator (standard syntax) or are part of a sub-expression
that is used as the right-hand operand of a NOT operator.
<p>
With the following provisos, each series of tokens in the FTS table that
matches one of the matchable phrases in the query expression is known as a
"phrase match":
<ol>
<li> If a matchable phrase is part of a series of phrases connected by
NEAR operators in the FTS query expression, then each phrase match
must be sufficiently close to other phrase matches of the relevant
types to satisfy the NEAR condition.
<li> If the matchable phrase in the FTS query is restricted to matching
data in a specified FTS table column, then only phrase matches that
occur within that column are considered.
</ol>
<tcl>hd_fragment offsets offsets</tcl>
<h2>The Offsets Function</h2>
<p>
For a SELECT query that uses the full-text index, the offsets() function
returns a text value containing a series of space-separated integers. For
each term in each <a href=#matchable>phrase match</a> of the current row,
there are four integers in the returned list. Each set of four integers is
interpreted as follows:
<table striped=1>
<tr><th>Integer <th>Interpretation
<tr><td>0
<td>The column number that the term instance occurs in (0 for the
leftmost column of the FTS table, 1 for the next leftmost, etc.).
<tr><td>1
<td>The term number of the matching term within the full-text query
expression. Terms within a query expression are numbered starting
from 0 in the order that they occur.
<tr><td>2
<td>The byte offset of the matching term within the column.
<tr><td>3
<td>The size of the matching term in bytes.
</table>
<p>
The following block contains examples that use the offsets function.
<codeblock>
CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE mail USING fts3(subject, body);
INSERT INTO mail VALUES('hello world', 'This message is a hello world message.');
INSERT INTO mail VALUES('urgent: serious', 'This mail is seen as a more serious mail');
<i>-- The following query returns a single row (as it matches only the first</i>
<i>-- entry in table "mail". The text returned by the offsets function is</i>
<i>-- "0 0 6 5 1 0 24 5".</i>
<i>--</i>
<i>-- The first set of four integers in the result indicate that column 0</i>
<i>-- contains an instance of term 0 ("world") at byte offset 6. The term instance</i>
<i>-- is 5 bytes in size. The second set of four integers shows that column 1</i>
<i>-- of the matched row contains an instance of term 0 ("world") at byte offset</i>
<i>-- 24. Again, the term instance is 5 bytes in size.</i>
SELECT offsets(mail) FROM mail WHERE mail MATCH 'world';
<i>-- The following query returns also matches only the first row in table "mail".</i>
<i>-- In this case the returned text is "1 0 5 7 1 0 30 7".</i>
SELECT offsets(mail) FROM mail WHERE mail MATCH 'message';
<i>-- The following query matches the second row in table "mail". It returns the</i>
<i>-- text "1 0 28 7 1 1 36 4". Only those occurrences of terms "serious" and "mail"</i>
<i>-- that are part of an instance of the phrase "serious mail" are identified; the</i>
<i>-- other occurrences of "serious" and "mail" are ignored.</i>
SELECT offsets(mail) FROM mail WHERE mail MATCH '"serious mail"';
</codeblock>
<tcl>hd_fragment snippet snippet</tcl>
<h2>The Snippet Function</h2>
<p>
The snippet function is used to create formatted fragments of document text
for display as part of a full-text query results report. The snippet function
may be passed between one and six arguments, as follows:
<table striped=1>
<tr><th>Argument <th>Default Value <th>Description
<tr><td>0 <td>N/A
<td> The first argument to the snippet function must always be the [FTS hidden column]
of the FTS table being queried and from which the snippet is to be taken. The
[FTS hidden column] is an automatically generated column with the same name as the
FTS table itself.
<tr><td>1 <td>"&lt;b&gt;"
<td> The "start match" text.
<tr><td>2 <td>"&lt;/b&gt;"
<td> The "end match" text.
<tr><td>3 <td>"&lt;b&gt;...&lt;/b&gt;"
<td> The "ellipses" text.
<tr><td>4 <td>-1
<td> The FTS table column number to extract the returned fragments of
text from. Columns are numbered from left to right starting with
zero. A negative value indicates that the text may be extracted
from any column.
<tr><td>5 <td>-15
<td> The absolute value of this integer argument is used as the
(approximate) number of tokens to include in the returned text
value. The maximum allowable absolute value is 64. The value of
this argument is referred to as <i>N</i> in the discussion below.
</table>
<p>
The snippet function first attempts to find a fragment of text consisting
of <i>|N|</i> tokens within the current row that contains at least one phrase
match for each matchable phrase matched somewhere in the current row,
where <i>|N|</i> is the absolute value of the sixth argument passed to the
snippet function. If the text stored in a single column contains less than
<i>|N|</i> tokens, then the entire column value is considered. Text fragments
may not span multiple columns.
<p>
If such a text fragment can be found, it is returned with the following
modifications:
<ul>
<li> If the text fragment does not begin at the start of a column value,
the "ellipses" text is prepended to it.
<li> If the text fragment does not finish at the end of a column value,
the "ellipses" text is appended to it.
<li> For each token in the text fragment that is part of a phrase match,
the "start match" text is inserted into the fragment before the token,
and the "end match" text is inserted immediately after it.
</ul>
<p>
If more than one such fragment can be found, then fragments that contain
a larger number of "extra" phrase matches are favoured. The start of
the selected text fragment may be moved a few tokens forward or backward
to attempt to concentrate the phrase matches toward the center of the
fragment.
<p>
Assuming <i>N</i> is a positive value, if no fragments can be found that
contain an phrase match corresponding to each matchable phrase, the snippet
function attempts to find two fragments of approximately <i>N</i>/2 tokens
that between them contain at least one phrase match for each matchable phrase
matched by the current row. If this fails, attempts are made to find three
fragments of <i>N</i>/3 tokens each and finally four <i>N</i>/4 token
fragments. If a set of four fragments cannot be found that encompasses the
required phrase matches, the four fragments of <i>N</i>/4 tokens that provide
the best coverage are selected.
<p>
If <i>N</i> is a negative value, and no single fragment can be found
containing the required phrase matches, the snippet function searches
for two fragments of <i>|N|</i> tokens each, then three, then four. In
other words, if the specified value of <i>N</i> is negative, the sizes
of the fragments is not decreased if more than one fragment is required
to provide the desired phrase match coverage.
<p>
After the <i>M</i> fragments have been located, where <i>M</i> is between
two and four as described in the paragraphs above, they are joined together
in sorted order with the "ellipses" text separating them. The three
modifications enumerated earlier are performed on the text before it is
returned.
<codeblock>
<b>Note: In this block of examples, newlines and whitespace characters have
been inserted into the document inserted into the FTS table, and the expected
results described in SQL comments. This is done to enhance readability only,
they would not be present in actual SQLite commands or output.</b>
<i>-- Create and populate an FTS table.</i>
CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE text USING fts4();
INSERT INTO text VALUES('
During 30 Nov-1 Dec, 2-3oC drops. Cool in the upper portion, minimum temperature 14-16oC
and cool elsewhere, minimum temperature 17-20oC. Cold to very cold on mountaintops,
minimum temperature 6-12oC. Northeasterly winds 15-30 km/hr. After that, temperature
increases. Northeasterly winds 15-30 km/hr.
');
<i>-- The following query returns the text value:</i>
<i>--</i>
<i>-- "&lt;b&gt;...&lt;/b&gt;cool elsewhere, minimum temperature 17-20oC. &lt;b&gt;Cold&lt;/b&gt; to very </i>
<i>-- &lt;b&gt;cold&lt;/b&gt; on mountaintops, minimum temperature 6&lt;b&gt;...&lt;/b&gt;".</i>
<i>--</i>
SELECT snippet(text) FROM text WHERE text MATCH 'cold';
<i>-- The following query returns the text value:</i>
<i>--</i>
<i>-- "...the upper portion, &#91;minimum&#93; &#91;temperature&#93; 14-16oC and cool elsewhere,</i>
<i>-- &#91;minimum&#93; &#91;temperature&#93; 17-20oC. Cold..."</i>
<i>--</i>
SELECT snippet(text, '&#91; '&#93;', '...') FROM text WHERE text MATCH '"min* tem*"'
</codeblock>
<h2 id=matchinfo tags=matchinfo>The Matchinfo Function</h2>
<p>
The matchinfo function returns a blob value. If it is used within a query
that does not use the full-text index (a "query by rowid" or "linear scan"),
then the blob is zero bytes in size. Otherwise, the blob consists of zero
or more 32-bit unsigned integers in machine byte-order. The exact number
of integers in the returned array depends on both the query and the value
of the second argument (if any) passed to the matchinfo function.
<p>
The matchinfo function is called with either one or two arguments. As for
all auxiliary functions, the first argument must be the special
[FTS hidden column]. The second argument, if it is specified, must be a text value
comprised only of the characters 'p', 'c', 'n', 'a', 'l', 's' and 'x'.
If no second argument is explicitly supplied, it defaults to "pcx". The
second argument is refered to as the "format string" below.
<p>
Characters in the matchinfo format string are processed from left to right.
Each character in the format string causes one or more 32-bit unsigned
integer values to be added to the returned array. The "values" column in
the following table contains the number of integer values appended to the
output buffer for each supported format string character. In the formula
given, <i>cols</i> is the number of columns in the FTS table, and
<i>phrases</i> is the number of <a href=#matchable>matchable phrases</a> in
the query.
<table striped=1>
<tr><th>Character<th>Values<th>Description
<tr><td>p <td>1 <td>The number of matchable phrases in the query.
<tr><td>c <td>1 <td>The number of user defined columns in the FTS
table (i.e. not including the docid or the [FTS hidden column]).
<tr><td>x <td style="white-space:nowrap">3 * <i>cols</i> * <i>phrases</i>
<td>
For each distinct combination of a phrase and table column, the
following three values:
<ul>
<li> In the current row, the number of times the phrase appears in
the column.
<li> The total number of times the phrase appears in the column in
all rows in the FTS table.
<li> The total number of rows in the FTS table for which the
column contains at least one instance of the phrase.
</ul>
The first set of three values corresponds to the left-most column
of the table (column 0) and the left-most matchable phrase in the
query (phrase 0). If the table has more than one column, the second
set of three values in the output array correspond to phrase 0 and
column 1. Followed by phrase 0, column 2 and so on for all columns of
the table. And so on for phrase 1, column 0, then phrase 1, column 1
etc. In other words, the data for occurences of phrase <i>p</i> in
column <i>c</i> may be found using the following formula:
<pre>
hits_this_row = array&#91;3 * (c + p*cols) + 0&#93;
hits_all_rows = array&#91;3 * (c + p*cols) + 1&#93;
docs_with_hits = array&#91;3 * (c + p*cols) + 2&#93;
</pre>
<tr><td>n <td>1 <td>The number of rows in the FTS4 table. This value is
only available when querying FTS4 tables, not FTS3.
<tr><td>a <td><i>cols</i> <td>For each column, the average number of
tokens in the text values stored in the column (considering all rows in
the FTS4 table). This value is only available when querying FTS4 tables,
not FTS3.
<tr><td>l <td><i>cols</i> <td>
For each column, the length of the value stored in the current row of the
FTS4 table, in tokens. This value is only available when querying
FTS4 tables, not FTS3. And only if the "matchinfo=fts3" directive was not
specified as part of the "CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE" statement used to create
the FTS4 table.
<tr><td>s <td><i>cols</i> <td>For each column, the length of the longest
subsequence of phrase matches that the column value has in common
with the query text. For example, if a table column contains the text
'a b c d e' and the query is 'a c "d e"', then the length of the longest
common subsequence is 2 (phrase "c" followed by phrase "d e").
</table>
<p>
For example:
<codeblock>
<i>-- Create and populate an FTS4 table with two columns:</i>
CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE t1 USING fts4(a, b);
INSERT INTO t1 VALUES('transaction default models default', 'Non transaction reads');
INSERT INTO t1 VALUES('the default transaction', 'these semantics present');
INSERT INTO t1 VALUES('single request', 'default data');
<i>-- In the following query, no format string is specified and so it defaults</i>
<i>-- to "pcx". It therefore returns a single row consisting of a single blob</i>
<i>-- value 80 bytes in size (20 32-bit integers - 1 for "p", 1 for "c" and</i>
<i>-- 3*2*3 for "x"). If each block of 4 bytes in</i> the blob is interpreted</i>
<i>-- as an unsigned integer in machine byte-order, the values will be:</i>
<i>--</i>
<i>-- 3 2 1 3 2 0 1 1 1 2 2 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 1</i>
<i>--</i>
<i>-- The row returned corresponds to the second entry inserted into table t1.</i>
<i>-- The first two integers in the blob show that the query contained three</i>
<i>-- phrases and the table being queried has two columns. The next block of</i>
<i>-- three integers describes column 0 (in this case column "a") and phrase</i>
<i>-- 0 (in this case "default"). The current row contains 1 hit for "default"</i>
<i>-- in column 0, of a total of 3 hits for "default" that occur in column</i>
<i>-- 0 of any table row. The 3 hits are spread across 2 different rows.</i>
<i>--</i>
<i>-- The next set of three integers (0 1 1) pertain to the hits for "default"</i>
<i>-- in column 1 of the table (0 in this row, 1 in all rows, spread across </i>
<i>-- 1 rows).</i>
<i>--</i>
SELECT matchinfo(t1) FROM t1 WHERE t1 MATCH 'default transaction "these semantics"';
<i>-- The format string for this query is "nl". The output array will therefore</i>
<i>-- contain 3 integer values - 1 for "n" and 2 for "l". The query returns</i>
<i>-- two rows (the first two rows in the table match). The values returned are:</i>
<i>--</i>
<i>-- 3 1 1</i>
<i>-- 3 2 0</i>
<i>--</i>
<i>-- The first value in the matchinfo array returned for both rows is 3 (the </i>
<i>-- number of rows in the table). The following two values are the lengths </i>
<i>-- of the longest common subsequence of phrase matches in each column.</i>
SELECT matchinfo(t1, 'nl') FROM t1 WHERE t1 MATCH 'default transaction';
</codeblock>
<p>
The matchinfo function is much faster than either the snippet or offsets
functions. This is because the implementation of both snippet and offsets
is required to retrieve the documents being analyzed from disk, whereas
all data required by matchinfo is available as part of the same portions
of the full-text index that are required to implement the full-text query
itself. This means that of the following two queries, the first may be
an order of magnitude faster than the second:
<codeblock>
SELECT docid, matchinfo(tbl) FROM tbl WHERE tbl MATCH &lt;query expression&gt;;
SELECT docid, offsets(tbl) FROM tbl WHERE tbl MATCH &lt;query expression&gt;;
</codeblock>
<p>
The matchinfo function provides all the information required to calculate
probabilistic "bag-of-words" relevancy scores such as
<a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okapi_BM25>Okapi BM25/BM25F</a> that may
be used to order results in a full-text search application. Appendix A of this
document, "[search application tips]", contains an example of using the
matchinfo() function efficiently.
<h1 id=fts4aux tags="fts4aux">Fts4aux - Direct Access to the Full-Text Index</h1>
<p>
As of version 3.7.6, SQLite includes a new virtual table module called
"fts4aux", which can be used to inspect the full-text index of an exiting
FTS3 or FTS4 table directly (despite its name, fts4aux works just as well
with FTS3 tables as it does with FTS4 tables). Fts4aux tables are read-only.
The only way to modify the contents of an fts4aux table is by modifying the
contents of the associated FTS table. The fts4aux module is automatically
included in all [compile fts|builds that include FTS].
<p>
An fts4aux virtual table is constructed with a single argument - the
unqualified name of the FTS table that it will be used to access.
For example:
<codeblock>
<i>-- Create an FTS4 table</i>
CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE ft USING fts4;
<i>-- Create an fts4aux table to access the full-text index for table "ft"</i>
CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE ft_terms USING fts4aux(ft);
</codeblock>
<p>
There is one row in an fts4aux table for each distinct term in the
associated FTS table. An fts4aux table always has the same three columns,
as follows, from left to right:
<table striped=1>
<tr><th>Column Name<th>Column Contents
<tr><td>term<td>
Contains the text of the term for this row.
<tr><td>documents<td>
Contains the number of rows of the FTS table that contain at
least one instance of the term (in any column). This column always
contains an integer value.
<tr><td>occurrences<td>
Contains the total number of instances of the term in all rows of the
FTS table. This column also always contains an integer value.
</table>
<p>
For example, using the tables created above:
<codeblock>
INSERT INTO ft VALUES('Apple banana Cherry');
INSERT INTO ft VALUES('Banana Date Fig');
INSERT INTO ft VALUES('Cherry Grapefruit Cherry');
<i>-- The following query returns this data:</i>
<i>--</i>
<i>-- apple | 1 | 1</i>
<i>-- banana | 2 | 2</i>
<i>-- cherry | 2 | 3</i>
<i>-- date | 1 | 1</i>
<i>-- fig | 1 | 1</i>
<i>-- grapefruit | 1 | 1</i>
<i>--</i>
SELECT term, documents, occurrences FROM ft_terms;
</codeblock>
<p>
In the example, the values in the "term" column are all lower case, even
though they were inserted into table "ft" in mixed case. This is because
an fts3aux table contains the terms as extracted from the document text
by the [tokenizer]. In this case, since table "ft" uses the
[tokenizer|simple tokenizer], this means all terms have been folded to
lower case.
<p>
During a transaction, some of the data written to an FTS table may be
cached in memory and written to the database only when the transaction is
committed. However the implementation of the fts4aux module is only able
to read data from the database. In practice this means that if an fts4aux
table is queried from within a transaction in which the associated
FTS table has been modified, the results of the query are likely to reflect
only a (possibly empty) subset of the changes made.
<h1 id=tokenizer tags="tokenizer">Tokenizers</h1>
<p>
An FTS tokenizer is a set of rules for extracting terms from a document
or basic FTS full-text query.
<p>
Unless a specific tokenizer is specified as part of the CREATE
VIRTUAL TABLE statement used to create the FTS table, the default
tokenizer, "simple", is used. The simple tokenizer extracts tokens from
a document or basic FTS full-text query according to the following
rules:
<ul>
<li><p> A term is a contiguous sequence of eligible characters, where
eligible characters are all alphanumeric characters, the "_" character,
and all characters with UTF codepoints greater than or equal to 128.
All other characters are discarded when splitting a document into terms.
Their only contribution is to separate adjacent terms.
<li><p> All uppercase characters within the ASCII range (UTF codepoints less
than 128), are transformed to their lowercase equivalents as part of the
tokenization process. Thus, full-text queries are case-insensitive when
using the simple tokenizer.
</ul>
<p>
For example, when a document containing the text "Right now, they're very
frustrated.", the terms extracted from the document and added to the
full-text index are, in order, "right now they re very frustrated". Such
a document would match a full-text query such as "MATCH 'Frustrated'",
as the simple tokenizer transforms the term in the query to lowercase
before searching the full-text index.
<p>
As well as the "simple" tokenizer, the FTS source code features a tokenizer
that uses the <a href="http://tartarus.org/~martin/PorterStemmer/">Porter
Stemming algorithm</a>. This tokenizer uses the same rules to separate
the input document into terms, but as well as folding all terms to lower
case it uses the Porter Stemming algorithm to reduce related English language
words to a common root. For example, using the same input document as in the
paragraph above, the porter tokenizer extracts the following tokens:
"right now thei veri frustrat". Even though some of these terms are not even
English words, in some cases using them to build the full-text index is more
useful than the more intelligible output produced by the simple tokenizer.
Using the porter tokenizer, the document not only matches full-text queries
such as "MATCH 'Frustrated'", but also queries such as "MATCH 'Frustration'",
as the term "Frustration" is reduced by the Porter stemmer algorithm to
"frustrat" - just as "Frustrated" is. So, when using the porter tokenizer,
FTS is able to find not just exact matches for queried terms, but matches
against similar English language terms. For more information on the
Porter Stemmer algorithm, please refer to the page linked above.
<p>
Example illustrating the difference between the "simple" and "porter"
tokenizers:
<codeblock>
<i>-- Create a table using the simple tokenizer. Insert a document into it.</i>
CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE simple USING fts3(tokenize=simple);
INSERT INTO simple VALUES('Right now they''re very frustrated');
<i>-- The first of the following two queries matches the document stored in</i>
<i>-- table "simple". The second does not.</i>
SELECT * FROM simple WHERE simple MATCH 'Frustrated';
SELECT * FROM simple WHERE simple MATCH 'Frustration';
<i>-- Create a table using the porter tokenizer. Insert the same document into it</i>
CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE porter USING fts3(tokenize=porter);
INSERT INTO porter VALUES('Right now they''re very frustrated');
<i>-- Both of the following queries match the document stored in table "porter".</i>
SELECT * FROM porter WHERE porter MATCH 'Frustrated';
SELECT * FROM porter WHERE porter MATCH 'Frustration';
</codeblock>
<p>
If this extension is compiled with the SQLITE_ENABLE_ICU pre-processor
symbol defined, then there exists a built-in tokenizer named "icu"
implemented using the ICU library. The first argument passed to the
xCreate() method (see fts3_tokenizer.h) of this tokenizer may be
an ICU locale identifier. For example "tr_TR" for Turkish as used
in Turkey, or "en_AU" for English as used in Australia. For example:
<codeblock>
CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE thai_text USING fts3(text, tokenize=icu th_TH)
</codeblock>
<p>
The ICU tokenizer implementation is very simple. It splits the input
text according to the ICU rules for finding word boundaries and discards
any tokens that consist entirely of white-space. This may be suitable
for some applications in some locales, but not all. If more complex
processing is required, for example to implement stemming or
discard punctuation, this can be done by creating a tokenizer
implementation that uses the ICU tokenizer as part of its implementation.
<h2>Custom (User Implemented) Tokenizers</h2>
<p>
As well as the built-in "simple", "porter" and (possibly) "icu" tokenizers,
FTS exports an interface that allows users to implement custom tokenizers
using C. The interface used to create a new tokenizer is defined and
described in the fts3_tokenizer.h source file.
<p>
Registering a new FTS tokenizer is similar to registering a new
virtual table module with SQLite. The user passes a pointer to a
structure containing pointers to various callback functions that
make up the implementation of the new tokenizer type. For tokenizers,
the structure (defined in fts3_tokenizer.h) is called
"sqlite3_tokenizer_module".
<p>
FTS does not expose a C-function that users call to register new
tokenizer types with a database handle. Instead, the pointer must
be encoded as an SQL blob value and passed to FTS through the SQL
engine by evaluating a special scalar function, "fts3_tokenizer()".
The fts3_tokenizer() function may be called with one or two arguments,
as follows:
<codeblock>
SELECT fts3_tokenizer(&lt;tokenizer-name&gt;);
SELECT fts3_tokenizer(&lt;tokenizer-name&gt;, &lt;sqlite3_tokenizer_module ptr&gt;);
</codeblock>
<p>
Where <tokenizer-name> is a string identifying the tokenizer and
<sqlite3_tokenizer_module ptr> is a pointer to an sqlite3_tokenizer_module
structure encoded as an SQL blob. If the second argument is present,
it is registered as tokenizer <tokenizer-name> and a copy of it
returned. If only one argument is passed, a pointer to the tokenizer
implementation currently registered as <tokenizer-name> is returned,
encoded as a blob. Or, if no such tokenizer exists, an SQL exception
(error) is raised.
<p>
<b>SECURITY WARNING</b>: If the fts3/4 extension is used in an environment
where potentially malicious users may execute arbitrary SQL, they should
be prevented from invoking the fts3_tokenizer() function, possibly using
the [sqlite3_set_authorizer()|authorisation callback].
<p>
The following block contains an example of calling the fts3_tokenizer()
function from C code:
<codeblock>
<i>/*
** Register a tokenizer implementation with FTS3 or FTS4.
*/</i>
int registerTokenizer(
sqlite3 *db,
char *zName,
const sqlite3_tokenizer_module *p
){
int rc;
sqlite3_stmt *pStmt;
const char *zSql = "SELECT fts3_tokenizer(?, ?)";
rc = sqlite3_prepare_v2(db, zSql, -1, &pStmt, 0);
if( rc!=SQLITE_OK ){
return rc;
}
sqlite3_bind_text(pStmt, 1, zName, -1, SQLITE_STATIC);
sqlite3_bind_blob(pStmt, 2, &p, sizeof(p), SQLITE_STATIC);
sqlite3_step(pStmt);
return sqlite3_finalize(pStmt);
}
<i>/*
** Query FTS for the tokenizer implementation named zName.
*/</i>
int queryTokenizer(
sqlite3 *db,
char *zName,
const sqlite3_tokenizer_module **pp
){
int rc;
sqlite3_stmt *pStmt;
const char *zSql = "SELECT fts3_tokenizer(?)";
*pp = 0;
rc = sqlite3_prepare_v2(db, zSql, -1, &pStmt, 0);
if( rc!=SQLITE_OK ){
return rc;
}
sqlite3_bind_text(pStmt, 1, zName, -1, SQLITE_STATIC);
if( SQLITE_ROW==sqlite3_step(pStmt) ){
if( sqlite3_column_type(pStmt, 0)==SQLITE_BLOB ){
memcpy(pp, sqlite3_column_blob(pStmt, 0), sizeof(*pp));
}
}
return sqlite3_finalize(pStmt);
}
</codeblock>
<h1 tags="segment btree">Data Structures</h1>
<p>
This section describes at a high-level the way the FTS module stores its
index and content in the database. It is <b>not necessary to read or
understand the material in this section in order to use FTS</b> in an
application. However, it may be useful to application developers attempting
to analyze and understand FTS performance characteristics, or to developers
contemplating enhancements to the existing FTS feature set.
<tcl>hd_fragment *shadowtab {FTS shadow tables}</tcl>
<p>
For each FTS virtual table in a database, three to five real (non-virtual) tables
are created to store the underlying data. These real tables are called "shadow tables".
The real tables are named "%_content",
"%_segdir", "%_segments", "%_stat", and "%_docsize", where "%" is replaced by the name
of the FTS virtual table.
<p>
The leftmost column of the "%_content" table is an INTEGER PRIMARY KEY field
named "docid". Following this is one column for each column of the FTS
virtual table as declared by the user, named by prepending the column name
supplied by the user with "c<i>N</i>", where <i>N</i> is the index of the
column within the table, numbered from left to right starting with 0. Data
types supplied as part of the virtual table declaration are not used as
part of the %_content table declaration. For example:
<codeblock>
<i>-- Virtual table declaration</i>
CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE abc USING fts4(a NUMBER, b TEXT, c);
<i>-- Corresponding %_content table declaration</i>
CREATE TABLE abc_content(docid INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, c0a, c1b, c2c);
</codeblock>
<p>
The %_content table contains the unadulterated data inserted by the user
into the FTS virtual table by the user. If the user does not explicitly
supply a "docid" value when inserting records, one is selected automatically
by the system.
<p>
The %_stat and %_docsize tables are only created if the FTS table uses the
FTS4 module, not FTS3. Furthermore, the %_docsize table is omitted if the
FTS4 table is created with the [matchinfo_fts3|"matchinfo=fts3"] directive
specified as part of the CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE statement. If they are created,
the schema of the two tables is as follows:
<codeblock>
CREATE TABLE %_stat(
id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY,
value BLOB
);
CREATE TABLE %_docsize(
docid INTEGER PRIMARY KEY,
size BLOB
);
</codeblock>
<p>
For each row in the FTS table, the %_docsize table contains a corresponding
row with the same "docid" value. The "size" field contains a blob consisting
of <i>N</i> FTS varints, where <i>N</i> is the number of user-defined columns
in the table. Each varint in the "size" blob is the number of tokens in the
corresponding column of the associated row in the FTS table. The %_stat table
always contains a single row with the "id" column set to 0. The "value"
column contains a blob consisting of <i>N+1</i> FTS varints, where <i>N</i>
is again the number of user-defined columns in the FTS table. The first
varint in the blob is set to the total number of rows in the FTS table. The
second and subsequent varints contain the total number of tokens stored in
the corresponding column for all rows of the FTS table.
<p>
The two remaining tables, %_segments and %_segdir, are used to store the
full-text index. Conceptually, this index is a lookup table that maps each
term (word) to the set of docid values corresponding to records in the
%_content table that contain one or more occurrences of the term. To
retrieve all documents that contain a specified term, the FTS module
queries this index to determine the set of docid values for records that
contain the term, then retrieves the required documents from the %_content
table. Regardless of the schema of the FTS virtual table, the %_segments
and %_segdir tables are always created as follows:
<codeblock>
CREATE TABLE %_segments(
blockid INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, <i>-- B-tree node id</i>
block blob <i>-- B-tree node data</i>
);
CREATE TABLE %_segdir(
level INTEGER,
idx INTEGER,
start_block INTEGER, <i>-- Blockid of first node in %_segments</i>
leaves_end_block INTEGER, <i>-- Blockid of last leaf node in %_segments</i>
end_block INTEGER, <i>-- Blockid of last node in %_segments</i>
root BLOB, <i>-- B-tree root node</i>
PRIMARY KEY(level, idx)
);
</codeblock>
<p>
The schema depicted above is not designed to store the full-text index
directly. Instead, it is used to one or more b-tree structures. There
is one b-tree for each row in the %_segdir table. The %_segdir table
row contains the root node and various meta-data associated with the
b-tree structure, and the %_segments table contains all other (non-root)
b-tree nodes. Each b-tree is referred to as a "segment". Once it has
been created, a segment b-tree is never updated (although it may be
deleted altogether).
<p>
The keys used by each segment b-tree are terms (words). As well as the
key, each segment b-tree entry has an associated "doclist" (document list).
A doclist consists of zero or more entries, where each entry consists of:
<ul>
<li> A docid (document id), and
<li> A list of term offsets, one for each occurrence of the term within
the document. A term offset indicates the number of tokens (words)
that occur before the term in question, not the number of characters
or bytes. For example, the term offset of the term "war" in the
phrase "Ancestral voices prophesying war!" is 3.
</ul>
<p>
Entries within a doclist are sorted by docid. Positions within a doclist
entry are stored in ascending order.
<p>
The contents of the logical full-text index is found by merging the
contents of all segment b-trees. If a term is present in more than one
segment b-tree, then it maps to the union of each individual doclist. If,
for a single term, the same docid occurs in more than one doclist, then only
the doclist that is part of the most recently created segment b-tree is
considered valid.
<p>
Multiple b-tree structures are used instead of a single b-tree to reduce
the cost of inserting records into FTS tables. When a new record is
inserted into an FTS table that already contains a lot of data, it is
likely that many of the terms in the new record are already present in
a large number of existing records. If a single b-tree were used, then
large doclist structures would have to be loaded from the database,
amended to include the new docid and term-offset list, then written back
to the database. Using multiple b-tree tables allows this to be avoided
by creating a new b-tree which can be merged with the existing b-tree
(or b-trees) later on. Merging of b-tree structures can be performed as
a background task, or once a certain number of separate b-tree structures
have been accumulated. Of course, this scheme makes queries more expensive
(as the FTS code may have to look up individual terms in more than one
b-tree and merge the results), but it has been found that in practice this
overhead is often negligible.
<h2>Variable Length Integer (varint) Format</h2>
<p>
Integer values stored as part of segment b-tree nodes are encoded using the
FTS varint format. This encoding is similar, but <b>not identical</b>, to the
the <a href="fileformat.html#varint_format">SQLite varint format</a>.
<p>
An encoded FTS varint consumes between one and ten bytes of space. The
number of bytes required is determined by the sign and magnitude of the
integer value encoded. More accurately, the number of bytes used to store
the encoded integer depends on the position of the most significant set bit
in the 64-bit twos-complement representation of the integer value. Negative
values always have the most significant bit set (the sign bit), and so are
always stored using the full ten bytes. Positive integer values may be
stored using less space.
<p>
The final byte of an encoded FTS varint has its most significant bit
cleared. All preceding bytes have the most significant bit set. Data
is stored in the remaining seven least significant bits of each byte.
The first byte of the encoded representation contains the least significant
seven bits of the encoded integer value. The second byte of the encoded
representation, if it is present, contains the seven next least significant
bits of the integer value, and so on. The following table contains examples
of encoded integer values:
<table striped=1>
<tr><th>Decimal<th>Hexadecimal<th width=100%>Encoded Representation
<tr><td>43<td>0x000000000000002B<td>0x2B
<tr><td>200815<td>0x000000000003106F<td>0x9C 0xA0 0x0C
<tr><td>-1<td>0xFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF<td>0xFF 0xFF 0xFF 0xFF 0xFF 0xFF 0xFF 0xFF 0xFF 0x01
</table>
<h2>Segment B-Tree Format</h2>
<p>
Segment b-trees are prefix-compressed b+-trees. There is one segment b-tree
for each row in the %_segdir table (see above). The root node of the segment
b-tree is stored as a blob in the "root" field of the corresponding row
of the %_segdir table. All other nodes (if any exist) are stored in the
"blob" column of the %_segments table. Nodes within the %_segments table are
identified by the integer value in the blockid field of the corresponding
row. The following table describes the fields of the %_segdir table:
<table striped=1>
<tr><th>Column <th width=100%>Interpretation
<tr><td>level <td>
Between them, the contents of the "level" and "idx" fields define the
relative age of the segment b-tree. The smaller the value stored in the
"level" field, the more recently the segment b-tree was created. If two
segment b-trees are of the same "level", the segment with the larger
value stored in the "idx" column is more recent. The PRIMARY KEY constraint
on the %_segdir table prevents any two segments from having the same value
for both the "level" and "idx" fields.
<tr><td>idx <td> See above.
<tr><td>start_block <td>
The blockid that corresponds to the node with the smallest blockid that
belongs to this segment b-tree. Or zero if the entire segment b-tree
fits on the root node. If it exists, this node is always a leaf node.
<tr><td>leaves_end_block <td>
The blockid that corresponds to the leaf node with the largest blockid
that belongs to this segment b-tree. Or zero if the entire segment b-tree
fits on the root node.
<tr><td>end_block <td>
The blockid that corresponds to the interior node with the largest
blockid that belongs to this segment b-tree. Or zero if the entire segment
b-tree fits on the root node. If it exists, this node is always an
interior node.
<tr><td>root <td>
Blob containing the root node of the segment b-tree.
</table>
<p>
Apart from the root node, the nodes that make up a single segment b-tree are
always stored using a contiguous sequence of blockids. Furthermore, the
nodes that make up a single level of the b-tree are themselves stored as
a contiguous block, in b-tree order. The contiguous sequence of blockids
used to store the b-tree leaves are allocated starting with the blockid
value stored in the "start_block" column of the corresponding %_segdir row,
and finishing at the blockid value stored in the "leaves_end_block"
field of the same row. It is therefore possible to iterate through all the
leaves of a segment b-tree, in key order, by traversing the %_segments
table in blockid order from "start_block" to "leaves_end_block".
<h3>Segment B-Tree Leaf Nodes</h3>
<p>
The following diagram depicts the format of a segment b-tree leaf node.
<center>
<img src=images/fts3_leaf_node.png>
<p> Segment B-Tree Leaf Node Format
</center>
<p>
The first term stored on each node ("Term 1" in the figure above) is
stored verbatim. Each subsequent term is prefix-compressed with respect
to its predecessor. Terms are stored within a page in sorted (memcmp)
order.
<h3>Segment B-Tree Interior Nodes</h3>
<p>
The following diagram depicts the format of a segment b-tree interior
(non-leaf) node.
<center>
<img src=images/fts3_interior_node.png>
<p> Segment B-Tree Interior Node Format
</center>
<h2>Doclist Format</h2>
<p>
A doclist consists of an array of 64-bit signed integers, serialized using
the FTS varint format. Each doclist entry is made up of a series of two
or more integers, as follows:
<ol>
<li> The docid value. The first entry in a doclist contains the literal docid
value. The first field of each subsequent doclist entry contains the
difference between the new docid and the previous one (always a positive
number).
<li> Zero or more term-offset lists. A term-offset list is present for each
column of the FTS virtual table that contains the term. A term-offset
list consists of the following:
<ol>
<li> Constant value 1. This field is omitted for any term-offset list
associated with column 0.
<li> The column number (1 for the second leftmost column, etc.). This
field is omitted for any term-offset list associated with column 0.
<li> A list of term-offsets, sorted from smallest to largest. Instead
of storing the term-offset value literally, each integer stored
is the difference between the current term-offset and the previous
one (or zero if the current term-offset is the first), plus 2.
</ol>
<li> Constant value 0.
</ol>
<center>
<img src=images/fts3_doclist2.png>
<p> FTS3 Doclist Format
</center>
<center>
<img src=images/fts3_doclist.png>
<p> FTS Doclist Entry Format
</center>
<p>
For doclists for which the term appears in more than one column of the FTS
virtual table, term-offset lists within the doclist are stored in column
number order. This ensures that the term-offset list associated with
column 0 (if any) is always first, allowing the first two fields of the
term-offset list to be omitted in this case.
<h1 id=appendix_a nonumber tags="search application tips">
Appendix A: Search Application Tips
</h1>
<p>
FTS is primarily designed to support Boolean full-text queries - queries
to find the set of documents that match a specified criteria. However, many
(most?) search applications require that results are somehow ranked in order
of "relevance", where "relevance" is defined as the likelihood that the user
who performed the search is interested in a specific element of the returned
set of documents. When using a search engine to find documents on the world
wide web, the user expects that the most useful, or "relevant", documents
will be returned as the first page of results, and that each subsequent page
contains progressively less relevant results. Exactly how a machine can
determine document relevance based on a users query is a complicated problem
and the subject of much ongoing research.
<p>
One very simple scheme might be to count the number of instances of the
users search terms in each result document. Those documents that contain
many instances of the terms are considered more relevant than those with
a small number of instances of each term. In an FTS application, the
number of term instances in each result could be determined by counting
the number of integers in the return value of the [offsets] function.
The following example shows a query that could be used to obtain the
ten most relevant results for a query entered by the user:
<codeblock>
<i>-- This example (and all others in this section) assumes the following schema</i>
CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE documents USING fts3(title, content);
<i>-- Assuming the application has supplied an SQLite user function named "countintegers"</i>
<i>-- that returns the number of space-separated integers contained in its only argument,</i>
<i>-- the following query could be used to return the titles of the 10 documents that contain</i>
<i>-- the greatest number of instances of the users query terms. Hopefully, these 10</i>
<i>-- documents will be those that the users considers more or less the most "relevant".</i>
SELECT title FROM documents
WHERE documents MATCH &lt;query&gt;
ORDER BY countintegers(offsets(document)) DESC
LIMIT 10 OFFSET 0
</codeblock>
<p>
The query above could be made to run faster by using the FTS [matchinfo]
function to determine the number of query term instances that appear in each
result. The matchinfo function is much more efficient than the offsets
function. Furthermore, the matchinfo function provides extra information
regarding the overall number of occurrences of each query term in the entire
document set (not just the current row) and the number of documents in which
each query term appears. This may be used (for example) to attach a higher
weight to less common terms which may increase the overall computed relevancy
of those results the user considers more interesting.
<codeblock>
<i>-- If the application supplies an SQLite user function called "rank" that</i>
<i>-- interprets the blob of data returned by matchinfo and returns a numeric</i>
<i>-- relevancy based on it, then the following SQL may be used to return the</i>
<i>-- titles of the 10 most relevant documents in the dataset for a users query.</i>
SELECT title FROM documents
WHERE documents MATCH &lt;query&gt;
ORDER BY rank(matchinfo(document)) DESC
LIMIT 10 OFFSET 0
</codeblock>
<p>
The SQL query in the example above uses less CPU than the first example
in this section, but still has a non-obvious performance problem. SQLite
satisfies this query by retrieving the value of the "title" column and
matchinfo data from the FTS module for every row matched by the users
query before it sorts and limits the results. Because of the way SQLite's
virtual table interface works, retrieving the value of the "title" column
requires loading the entire row from disk (including the "content" field,
which may be quite large). This means that if the users query matches
several thousand documents, many megabytes of "title" and "content" data
may be loaded from disk into memory even though they will never be used
for any purpose.
<p>
The SQL query in the following example block is one solution to this
problem. In SQLite, when a <a href="optoverview.html#flattening">sub-query
used in a join contains a LIMIT clause</a>, the results of the sub-query are
calculated and stored in temporary table before the main query is executed.
This means that SQLite will load only the docid and matchinfo data for each
row matching the users query into memory, determine the docid values
corresponding to the ten most relevant documents, then load only the title
and content information for those 10 documents only. Because both the matchinfo
and docid values are gleaned entirely from the full-text index, this results
in dramatically less data being loaded from the database into memory.
<codeblock>
SELECT title FROM documents JOIN (
SELECT docid, rank(matchinfo(document)) AS rank
FROM documents
WHERE documents MATCH &lt;query&gt;
ORDER BY rank DESC
LIMIT 10 OFFSET 0
) AS ranktable USING(docid)
ORDER BY ranktable.rank DESC
</codeblock>
<p>
The next block of SQL enhances the query with solutions to two other problems
that may arise in developing search applications using FTS:
<ol>
<li> <p>
The [snippet] function cannot be used with the above query. Because
the outer query does not include a "WHERE ... MATCH" clause, the snippet
function may not be used with it. One solution is to duplicate the WHERE
clause used by the sub-query in the outer query. The overhead associated
with this is usually negligible.
<li> <p>
The relevancy of a document may depend on something other than just
the data available in the return value of matchinfo. For example
each document in the database may be assigned a static weight based
on factors unrelated to its content (origin, author, age, number
of references etc.). These values can be stored by the application
in a separate table that can be joined against the documents table
in the sub-query so that the rank function may access them.
</ol>
<p>
This version of the query is very similar to that used by the
<a href="http://www.sqlite.org/search?q=fts3">sqlite.org documentation search</a>
application.
<codeblock>
<i>-- This table stores the static weight assigned to each document in FTS table</i>
<i>-- "documents". For each row in the documents table there is a corresponding row</i>
<i>-- with the same docid value in this table.</i>
CREATE TABLE documents_data(docid INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, weight);
<i>-- This query is similar to the one in the block above, except that:</i>
<i>--</i>
<i>-- 1. It returns a "snippet" of text along with the document title for display. So</i>
<i>-- that the snippet function may be used, the "WHERE ... MATCH ..." clause from</i>
<i>-- the sub-query is duplicated in the outer query.</i>
<i>--</i>
<i>-- 2. The sub-query joins the documents table with the document_data table, so that</i>
<i>-- implementation of the rank function has access to the static weight assigned</i>
<i>-- to each document.</i>
SELECT title, snippet(documents) FROM documents JOIN (
SELECT docid, rank(matchinfo(document), documents_data.weight) AS rank
FROM documents JOIN documents_data USING(docid)
WHERE documents MATCH &lt;query&gt;
ORDER BY rank DESC
LIMIT 10 OFFSET 0
) AS ranktable USING(docid)
WHERE documents MATCH &lt;query&gt;
ORDER BY ranktable.rank DESC
</codeblock>
<p>
All the example queries above return the ten most relevant query results.
By modifying the values used with the OFFSET and LIMIT clauses, a query
to return (say) the next ten most relevant results is easy to construct.
This may be used to obtain the data required for a search applications second
and subsequent pages of results.
<p>
The next block contains an example rank function that uses matchinfo data
implemented in C. Instead of a single weight, it allows a weight to be
externally assigned to each column of each document. It may be registered
with SQLite like any other user function using [sqlite3_create_function].
<codeblock>
<i>/*</i>
<i>** SQLite user defined function to use with matchinfo() to calculate the</i>
<i>** relevancy of an FTS match. The value returned is the relevancy score</i>
<i>** (a real value greater than or equal to zero). A larger value indicates </i>
<i>** a more relevant document.</i>
<i>**</i>
<i>** The overall relevancy returned is the sum of the relevancies of each </i>
<i>** column value in the FTS table. The relevancy of a column value is the</i>
<i>** sum of the following for each reportable phrase in the FTS query:</i>
<i>**</i>
<i>** (&lt;hit count&gt; / &lt;global hit count&gt) * &lt;column weight&gt;</i>
<i>**</i>
<i>** where &lt;hit count&gt; is the number of instances of the phrase in the</i>
<i>** column value of the current row and &lt;global hit count&gt; is the number</i>
<i>** of instances of the phrase in the same column of all rows in the FTS</i>
<i>** table. The &lt;column weight&gt; is a weighting factor assigned to each</i>
<i>** column by the caller (see below).</i>
<i>**</i>
<i>** The first argument to this function must be the return value of the FTS </i>
<i>** matchinfo() function. Following this must be one argument for each column </i>
<i>** of the FTS table containing a numeric weight factor for the corresponding </i>
<i>** column. Example:</i>
<i>**</i>
<i>** CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE documents USING fts3(title, content)</i>
<i>**</i>
<i>** The following query returns the docids of documents that match the full-text</i>
<i>** query &lt;query&gt; sorted from most to least relevant. When calculating</i>
<i>** relevance, query term instances in the 'title' column are given twice the</i>
<i>** weighting of those in the 'content' column.</i>
<i>**</i>
<i>** SELECT docid FROM documents </i>
<i>** WHERE documents MATCH &lt;query&gt; </i>
<i>** ORDER BY rank(matchinfo(documents), 1.0, 0.5) DESC</i>
<i>*/</i>
static void rankfunc(sqlite3_context *pCtx, int nVal, sqlite3_value **apVal){
int *aMatchinfo; <i>/* Return value of matchinfo() */</i>
int nCol; <i>/* Number of columns in the table */</i>
int nPhrase; <i>/* Number of phrases in the query */</i>
int iPhrase; <i>/* Current phrase */</i>
double score = 0.0; <i>/* Value to return */</i>
assert( sizeof(int)==4 );
<i> /* Check that the number of arguments passed to this function is correct.</i>
<i> ** If not, jump to wrong_number_args. Set aMatchinfo to point to the array</i>
<i> ** of unsigned integer values returned by FTS function matchinfo. Set</i>
<i> ** nPhrase to contain the number of reportable phrases in the users full-text</i>
<i> ** query, and nCol to the number of columns in the table.</i>
<i> */</i>
if( nVal&lt;1 ) goto wrong_number_args;
aMatchinfo = (unsigned int *)sqlite3_value_blob(apVal&#x5B;0&#x5D;);
nPhrase = aMatchinfo&#x5B;0&#x5D;;
nCol = aMatchinfo&#x5B;1&#x5D;;
if( nVal!=(1+nCol) ) goto wrong_number_args;
<i> /* Iterate through each phrase in the users query. */</i>
for(iPhrase=0; iPhrase&lt;nPhrase; iPhrase++){
int iCol; <i>/* Current column */</i>
<i> /* Now iterate through each column in the users query. For each column,</i>
<i> ** increment the relevancy score by:</i>
<i> **</i>
<i> ** (&lt;hit count&gt; / &lt;global hit count&gt) * &lt;column weight&gt;</i>
<i> **</i>
<i> ** aPhraseinfo&#x5B;&#x5D; points to the start of the data for phrase iPhrase. So</i>
<i> ** the hit count and global hit counts for each column are found in </i>
<i> ** aPhraseinfo&#x5B;iCol*3&#x5D; and aPhraseinfo&#x5B;iCol*3+1&#x5D;, respectively.</i>
<i> */</i>
int *aPhraseinfo = &aMatchinfo&#x5B;2 + iPhrase*nCol*3&#x5D;;
for(iCol=0; iCol&lt;nCol; iCol++){
int nHitCount = aPhraseinfo&#x5B;3*iCol&#x5D;;
int nGlobalHitCount = aPhraseinfo&#x5B;3*iCol+1&#x5D;;
double weight = sqlite3_value_double(apVal&#x5B;iCol+1&#x5D;);
if( nHitCount>0 ){
score += ((double)nHitCount / (double)nGlobalHitCount) * weight;
}
}
}
sqlite3_result_double(pCtx, score);
return;
<i> /* Jump here if the wrong number of arguments are passed to this function */</i>
wrong_number_args:
sqlite3_result_error(pCtx, "wrong number of arguments to function rank()", -1);
}
</codeblock>

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